A good Christian friend of mine named John casually mentioned that the earth/universe is billions of years old as part of a message on other info he sent me. So I commented on the age of the earth saying that many unprovable assumptions are at work here, and there is more that we do not know than what we know about matter, time, and creation history in scientific terms. For example, the speed of light used to be thought of as constant, but not now.

John’s Response – True, David. I’m working on the Vernon McGee assumption that there was an enormous period of time involved at the beginning of creation. His hypothesis is basically, that there was creation of the universe, some enormous cataclysm (probably connected with the fall of Satan), then the rest of creation. You can either agree, or not. It seems to be upheld because of… well, I’ll send it to you and let McGee explain it.

As I told you, I believe all parts of the Word are important, but God has not given me a consuming interest in the parts that don’t center on salvation (I’ll blame Him). He has obviously made that part important to you, perhaps partially so that you can teach me! : )

True also that “billions of years” cannot be proven. The flip side of that is that neither can it be disproven. That brings me to consider that really this argument about the length of time that passes in the course of “creation” is based on speculation from both directions. God wrote perhaps several hundred times more about the last 8 days of Christ’s life than he wrote about the creation of the universe. I take that as a significant clue that He prefers that we concentrate on salvation over speculation. I suppose I do throw in speculation, but I don’t insist that that speculation is right.

Vernon McGee (1904-1988) stated his old-earth views quite plainly: The first eleven chapters [of Genesis] cover a minimum time spans of two thousand years – actually, two thousand years plus. I feel that it is safe to say that they may cover several hundred thousand years. I believe this first section of Genesis can cover any time in the past that you may need to fit into your particular theory, and the chances are that you would come short of it even then.

Who created the universe? God did. He created it out of nothing. When? I don’t know, and nobody else knows. Some men say one billion years ago, some say two billion, and now some say five billion. I personally suspect they are all pikers. I think God created it long before that.

In the enclosed audio file, listen from 2:00 – 8:00 of file 01002. McGee thinks that Moses would be amused at people “missing the point”. In file 01005, listen from 9:30 to maybe 12:00.

There’s another file that explains the actual original wording, which is a very compelling argument to make me believe that McGee’s interpretation is right. I’ll send that along when I find it.

Now, please understand that I converse with people who have the most bizarre views of God and the universe. As with you, all those years ago at Camp Kenan, I gently begin with salvation and hope the seed lands in fertile soil. In the meantime, with the help of you, Franklyn, Vernon, and… oh, yeah – God, I try to improve my understanding. I feed that to others at the fastest rate that I believe they can receive it. I make it fairly clear that I believe with all my heart, but that I also have SO much to learn.

Regards, John P.S. This is not in any way to refute. It is only to explain.

Dave’s Response – I appreciate your sensitivity on this issue of age of the earth and universe. I certainly agree with you that the answer does not determine salvation. The young-earth creationists claim the same. What deeply bothers the young-earthers is that the only driving force compelling the old-agers belief system is because evolution, in order to be true, MUST have billions and billions of years to do its “magic.” In other words, evolution theory is causing this error. Error causes further error. When science bases its beliefs on a foundational error, how can one trust its off-shoots?

If evolution was not in the minds of scientists and Bible believers, a plain reading of Genesis makes the earth thousands, not billions of years old. James Ussher (1581-1656) was Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to establish the time and date of the creation as the night preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar. Although mocked in arrogant evolutionist circles, Ussher was no quack and his research was excellent. The conclusion is that there is simply no room in human history for billions of years. When we especially realize that the Bible is emphatic concerning there was no death before sin, an evolutionary history is totally incompatible with Holy Scriptures. In other words, as soon as a Christian believes in billions of years of history, then death and suffering had to have begun BEFORE Adam and Eve sinned. It is HERE where the slippery slope to undermine the authority and accuracy of Scripture begins. If you can resolve this conflict, then I may be partly open to the idea of billions of years of history.

Dr. Russell Humphreys is a brilliant scientist who has formulated complicated theories asserting a young earth and universe. Humphreys graduated B.S. from Duke University and was awarded his Ph.D in physics from Louisiana State University in 1972. He has worked for General Electric and Sandia National Laboratories in nuclear physics where he received a patent and a science award so he is far from being some quack. He has offered a Young Earth Creationist cosmological model to deal with the distant starlight problem and has answered well criticisms from those who attack him. His book is entitled, “Starlight and Time.”

The truth is that science, because it has grown in knowledge so fast in modern times, has become arrogant with this knowledge and has closed its mind to alternative thinking, the one thing this discipline should NEVER do. That said, I still agree with you about not emphasizing all this when witnessing because our culture has been too evolutionized and this would be “casting peals before the swine” type of thing. If the age of the earth comes up, I simply say there are different views that can be defended. But for the Christian who really trusts the Scriptures, they need to look harder into this issue. It is slippery slope when people start treating Genesis as non historical.

Here is a list of just some of the many scientific problems with the earth being billions of years old:

1. Helium rises from under the earth’s crust and continues to leak out of the atmosphere. By now there should be none left but there is a lot still in the earth.
2.  The oceans gradually get saltier, but they are only 3.6% salt today. If earth is real old, that percentage
   should be much higher.
3.  Oil under the earth;s crust is still under too much pressure. If earth is really old, that pressure would
   have relieved itself long ago.
4.  If old, the sea floor should have much more sediment built up.
5.  The moon is gradually moving away from earth. if this rate of distance change has been constant (as all evolutionist bet on), then billions of year ago it would have been too close to earth and would have caused multiple problems resulting in killing of all life. In addition, the moon should be much farther away by now.
6.  If old, human populations should be much more advanced by now. Have you ever wondered why the native American Indian population was not as dense as in the Middle East and Europe? I think it is because the first humans came from the Fertile Crescent area some 6,000-10,000 years ago and migration and population increase takes time.
7. The magnetic field is getting weaker at a rate that can be measured. Assuming this has been a constant rate which evolutionists assert, it would be too weak by now to protect life.
8.  Earth’s rotation is slowing which means it used to be faster. If we go back thousands of years there is no problem because the speed of rotation would only be slightly faster. But go back billions of years, we have earth spinning so fast that no life could exist.
9.  Top soil forms slowly and we have only a handful of inches. If older, we should have much more.
10.  Ice core rings are not annual rings. Warm-cold changes form them so one year could have multiple rings. Therefore, we cannot determine age by simply counting rings.
11.  Oldest tree is the Bristle Cone Pine and dates only 4300 years. If earth is older, why aren’t there trees
    older? Noah’s Flood happened about 4500 years ago where all the trees were wiped out (but not there
    seeds).
12.  Stalagmites and stalactites form quickly under the right conditions – several feet in a few years.
    These are not proofs of an ancient earth.
13.  The Radio Isotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) research group excavated many organic samples from various levels within the earth’s crust, some very deep while other not so deep and many in between. They sent different samples to different labs to be carbon dated. They did not tell the labs they were creation scientists fearing non cooperation or fudging the results due to deeply held biases. Carbon-14 is constantly entering any living thing (plant or animal) but as soon as the life dies, the carbon-14 ceases to accumulate. Instead it decays into Nitrogen-14. The half-life of C-14 is 5,730 years. This means that in that amount of time, half of it has changed over to N-14. After, say, 30,000 years, scientists will not be able to detect it any longer. Certainly if something died millions of years ago, no traces of C-14 could ever be found. The RATE results provide scientific proof that all samples studied died only thousands of years ago and at about the same time in history due to the residue of C-14 remaining in all the samples! The results also indicate they died at about the same time. Since this evidence contradicts evolutionary theory, evolutionists who have commented on this say that there must have been a contamination of the samples. While this is always a possibility in this kind of study, it is remote due to special care the scientists take to prevent it. So far as I know, critics have simply stated their problem with the RATE findings rather than attempting to duplicate the study. Any open-minded researcher would be motivated to try to replicate this. RATE published its findings in November 2005. They also now suspect that decay rates have not been constant. Specifically, they think that before Noah’s Flood, due to severe differences in atmosphere and other factors, these rates were much faster than what they are today which could explain false old-age readings based on modern day assumptions (uniformitarianism) concerning all decay rates.

Why haven’t evolutionists ever Carbon-14 tested samples found buried deep? Their “geologic column” rules their minds. In other words, they view the age of a sample by how deep it is found. Simply put, they judge the age of the sample by what layer it was found in and they judge the age of the layer by what samples were found in them. If this isn’t circular reasoning I don’t know what is. In their minds it is a waste of time and money to Carbon-14 test a sample that “obviously” died millions of years ago. Just some food for thought.

I listened to your first file from Vernon McGee. All is arguments against evolution were good except the info about the Puluxy River Valley that supposedly had human and dinosaur footprints together. Dr. Carl Baugh first reported this info. According to Answers in Genesis, this is not a credible report for various scientific reasons. One good thing about AIG is that they stay up on latest facts, criticisms, and theories about origins and history.

I just finished your second file on Divisions, but it stopped after 9 minutes 30 sec and did not continue on. I thought that there might be more. In any case, from what I did hear, he never dealt with the death before sin problem of old-earthers. By the way, young-earthers realize what the emphasis is with Christianity and the Bible. McGee implies that we don’t.

John’s Response – I agree that the slope is slippery. I think many learned Christians contend that even if the McGee thoughts are correct, that it opens the door to evolution. My thought is that God knew all of this would happen and He could have ended the controversy by a couple sentences in Genesis. He chose not to. If I adopt the young earth theory, it would be against my judgement at this point. Since I know that it is a possible stumbling block for others, I just tend to stay away from it. Because of my background of the last 10 years, people like to draw me into these conversations, so I neither confirm, nor deny, and revector them into the salvation story. The best explanation I’ve read/heard is McGee’s, but I keep an open mind, but not so open that it allows my brains to fall out.J

There is far more evidence to support the existence of our saving God than there is to support evolution. I believe the hand of Satan guided the pens of Darwin, Mohammad, … My stumbling block is that God’s story has always been so obvious to me that it’s hard for me to understand why it is so confusing to others. Frankly, I can’t fathom the motivation for people who seemingly prefer to walk around blind.

I appreciate your patience with me, and the part you have played in my eternity, my friend. We have forever to chat, and that’s kinda nice.

Feedback:

Dave W (4/26/13) – Nice Job Dave.